A man walked into his brother’s apartment after church, found a woman unconscious and called 911.
He told the operator she was his brother’s girlfriend, and the voice on the line began giving him one plain instruction after another. The operator told him they would start CPR with ventilation first and had him lay her flat on her back.
“We’re going to do this 500 times or until help can arrive, OK?” the operator said in the 911 call.
The woman they were trying to save was Hayden Panettiere. CBS News and ABC News have obtained audio of the seven-minute call, and ABC got it through a Freedom of Information Act request to Greenville County EMS. Medics responded shortly before 2 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 16, to the Judson Mill Lofts on Easley Bridge Road in Greenville, South Carolina, where she had been staying.
She was pronounced dead at the scene about 40 minutes later, despite advanced cardiac life support. She was 36.
Country fans knew her best as Juliette Barnes, the country musician she played for six seasons on Nashville, a role that earned her two Golden Globe nominations. When Country Thang Daily first reported her death, the cause had not been released. The coroner has since given an answer, and the 911 audio captures the first minutes of the effort to save her.
A Dispatcher Walked the Caller Through CPR Until First Responders Arrived
The caller was Zach Hickerson, the brother of her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson. Both brothers were at the apartment and called 911 when she went into cardiac arrest. In a police report, an officer wrote that Zach was the first person he spoke with and that Zach told him she was his brother’s girlfriend. Brian told investigators the couple had arrived in South Carolina the night before.
At one point on the call, the operator asked whether they had a defibrillator, and Zach said he did not know if there was one in the apartment building. The operator kept guiding him through CPR until first responders arrived. Brian Hickerson has said he gave her multiple doses of Narcan, and Zach told TMZ days later that his brother had given it to her.
The Greenville County Coroner’s Office ruled her death an accident caused by the toxic effects of multiple drugs. Its release listed fentanyl, 4-ANPP, alprazolam, methocarbamol and quetiapine, and no signs of trauma were found that would have contributed to her death.
The case is still open. Greenville police are investigating, and the DEA has joined them to identify the drugs involved and where they came from. The department told WYFF4 that cases like this are complex and take time to develop.
Hayden Panettiere Had Spent Years Telling the Truth About Addiction and Abuse
She had talked about her struggles for years. In 2022 she told People magazine she became addicted to opioids and alcohol in her teens, and she had been in rehab just weeks before she died.
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In May 2026, less than three months before that call, she published her memoir, This Is Me, subtitled A Reckoning. It covered addiction, postpartum depression and years of domestic violence by a man she called only “Brian.” Brian Hickerson pleaded no contest in Los Angeles to injuring a spouse or girlfriend and was sentenced to four years of probation, and she sought a restraining order against him in 2020.
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In a May 2026 interview with TMZ, he admitted he had been drinking, got physical with her and was arrested.
That same month, she sat down with CBS News’ Gayle King and talked about where she stood.
“Still working on myself all the time. I had a great therapist and I’m … better, healthier than I’ve been in a long time,” she said.
She was carrying grief, too. Her younger brother, Jansen, died in February 2023 at 28, and she told E! News in May that the grief just evolves and that, as the older sibling, she was riddled with guilt.
She told King what she wanted people to know.
“I really wanted to share with the world that they don’t have to be afraid. That they can live their truth. They can be imperfect,” she said.
Investigators are still working to learn where the drugs came from. The recording already holds one plain truth about Hayden Panettiere’s last afternoon. The woman who spent her final spring telling people they did not have to be afraid had a voice on the line that kept trying to help her until help came.
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